Any info on RTE DTT trials?

Ulsterman 1690

More accurately, we "lent" British Sky Broadcasting our 5 frequency allocations at 31W under the 1977 ITU allocation, and MarcoPolo 2 used them. whatever channels were on #4, #5 and the blank carrier on BSB used Irish frequencies

Now I AM confused

WARC1977 allocated five frequencies to every country in Europe regardless of size. Ireland and the UK had five each. Why therfore did BSB want to "borrow" Irish frequencies when they had five perfectly good ones of their own

Incidently its an oft forgotton fact that E-sat were et up to bid for the Irish DBS franchise* (which was subsequently awarded to some lot called "Atlantic Satellites") and E-sat subsequently moved into radio (98FM Dublin) and telecoms (DigiFone) when they didnt get the Satellite contract

* = Its a bit wierd that this ill-fated franchise was awarded before there was ever any legislation in Ireland to provide for Independent broadcasting

L1011

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

Now I AM confused

WARC1977 allocated five frequencies to every country in Europe regardless of size. Ireland and the UK had five each. Why therfore did BSB want to "borrow" Irish frequencies when they had five perfectly good ones of their own

Incidently its an oft forgotton fact that E-sat were et up to bid for the Irish DBS franchise* (which was subsequently awarded to some lot called "Atlantic Satellites") and E-sat subsequently moved into radio (98FM Dublin) and telecoms (DigiFone) when they didnt get the Satellite contract

* = Its a bit wierd that this ill-fated franchise was awarded before there was ever any legislation in Ireland to provide for Independent broadcasting

Because BSB launched two five transponder satellites, and due to whacking up the output power, could only run three tx's on each; meaning they needed to use two of our frequencies (satellites weren't reconfigurable back then) to broadcast their five channels. Coincidentally they had configured Marcopolo 2 to the Irish frequencies :rolleyes:

Edit:

Ack, never mind, I've found the list of channels they actually used and they were the UK allocations, they Irish ones were unused... so it seems they put 3UK/2IE, 2UK/3IE configurations on the two birds. The other five were definately on our 5 allocations - 11747, 11823, 11900, 11977, 12054 - though.

watty

Sorry I'm always mixing up Videocrypt and Videoguard.

The first Astra Satellite at 28.2 used by Sky Digital was pinching Eutelsat's slot.

Astra had to pay compensation. This is also why some Sky channels are on Eurobird.

That slot was for Central Europe.

There are various kinds of allocations..

Frequencies. These tend to be common for a platform but channels, be allocated on national/geographic bases

Slots. Someone decides which companies can put which satellites where in sky. Also a slot may have multiple beams re-using the same frequencies for different geographic areas.

The same area may be illuminated by 30 different Satellites on SAME frequency too, as long as the angle separation means the dish only sees one at a time.


FTA means no encryption. No-one has a suitable beam (yet).

FTV means encryption. But Sky won't allow other encryptions on its box nor allow a CAM for its Videoguard system on anyone elses box.

It would be economic suicide to try to convince Irish home they need two boxes if they want RTE and Sky Sports. If a different satellite was used, then TWO dishes to get BBC and RTE even on the same receiver.

If two boxes on one dish you need a dual or quad LNB instead of the standard LNB.

Basically because of Sky's very dominant position you either go FTA (no encryption, works on Sky box or any box with no card) or Sky Platform encryption. (Either free for RTE and customer pays: current deal, or Freeish for customer and RTE pays 40 million, because Sky decides the price and rules.)

Telefís

Thanks for that watty - very helpful!

On a related issue, what was the fundamental reason does anyone know that caused the DTT project that had been worked on so avidly, to collapse c.2000? Obviously there was delay after delay etc, but considering it happened way before the collapse of ITV Digital what caused it in Ireland?

How did we suddenly turn from such optimism in 1999-2000 to disaster c.2001? Did the value of the RTÉ transmission network fall through the floor, were investors wary of commiting funds post-dotcom crash or what?

As of 2006 is RTÉ still to hold a 33% stake in the new transmission company, and is there still going to be a seperate multiplex operator?

Sponge Bob

Telef&#237 wrote: »

Did we suddenly turn from such optimism in 1999-2000 to disaster c.2001? Did the value of the RTÉ transmission network fall through the floor, were investors wary of commiting funds post-dotcom crash or what?

Correct, ITV freeview not doing great was another part of it and there was never a firm cut off date (like in the UK ) for analogue.

As of 2006 is RTÉ still to hold a 33% stake in the new transmission company, and is there still going to be a seperate multiplex operator?

there will be another multiplex operator , maybe even 2 or 3 of them .

dunno about shareholdings.

Psychedelik

Yea it's a real pity that RTE DTT never got off the ground.

I find it ironic that it didn't because of industry pressure, a la TV3. ITV own 50% of TV3 and ITV Digital failed mainly because of Sky's strongarm presence. How ironic! And ITV prevented RTE's offering!

Now there's no real competition in the Digital TV market; NTL and co. are practically retailers for Sky.

watty

Timeline pinched from BBC
Jan 1997: BSkyB, Carlton and Granada form British Digital Broadcasting
June 1997: BSkyB told to quit project
Aug 1998: BDB renamed ONdigital
Nov 1998: ONdigital starts broadcasting
Apr 2001: rebranded as ITV Digital
Sep 2001: Sum invested hits £788m
Feb 2002: ITV Digital shake-up revealed
Mar 2002: Administrators called in
May 2002: Pay-TV services switched off

There was a Spanish DTT collapse too. It is only now getting going.

The original show was supposed to be all RTE, but they didn't have cash. And then when it was offered for tender no-one wanted it, is my memory. Maybe we need to Google on Irish News a bit.

Telefís

I'm reading an informative book on it. In 2000, just before the 2001 Act was passed it was finally agreed that RTÉ would have a 33% share in the trans company - just a shareholder/s for the remaining 67% were needed. The multiplex operation was to go out to tender. Then the book ends!!! :mad:

There's a hole between what happened between then and the ITV collapse!

Sponge Bob

Telef&#237 wrote: »

what happened between then and the ITV collapse!

a veritable abyss opened up and swallowed everything , twas Mary O Rourke

Telefís

Who else, who else...

DMC

Was the bauld Mar in charge of communications before Dermot Ahern? Would it not have been covered by Síle Dee before the creation of the present dept?

Telefís

Oh it was Síle alright DMC - just you have to blame Mary for everything that's wrong in the world. Didn't you know?

Sponge Bob

Mary O'Rourke was in charge of ODTR in 2001 / 2002 (now Comreg) .

ODTR was in charge of spectrum allocation and policy as ye can see .

Spectrum is what you need for DTT .

Sile was concurrently the minister for Arts and Heritage and Wotsits including RTE who would have had to apply for spectrum to broadcast but the spectrum itself along with the spectrum use policy was a Mary O'Rourke disaster of the 'black' kind.

DMC

Yes, thats right.
Pre-'02, as Minister for Public Enterprise, she was in charge of the techincal aspects of communication, like the eircom sell-off and the setting up of the ODTR. Whereas Ms. DeV was in charge of the broadcasting policy. Bit of a balls at the time, its all under the one roof now.

Sponge Bob

its still a balls , read my sig

Conor1

it it possible to get the other channels BBC world and BBC prime in the republic of ireland? i have been able to view them abroad and was wondering if they can be tuned in on the sky digibox?

watty

Conor1 wrote:

it it possible to get the other channels BBC world and BBC prime in the republic of ireland? i have been able to view them abroad and was wondering if they can be tuned in on the sky digibox?

BBC World: Sort of

The 28E that the Digibox points at does not have BBC World or BBC Prime (BBC News24 is on it though).

You would need a slightly larger dish (for rain) and to move it west to 13E or 19E instead.


BBC Prime: This is a viaaccess card subscription channel. The viewing card won't work in a Digibox. It is also on 13E.

I get various "copies" of BBC World on 13E and 19E. One on 13E has the BBC Teletext news pages.

The Sky Digibox is not very good for anything other than Sky.

The BBC does not put these channels on Sky as they are commercial BBC Enterprises with Adverts, so in UK they have to use different satellite position. Also you can't subscribe to BBC prime in the UK.

With BBC1 .. BBC4, CBBC, Cbbeebies, BBC News 24, BBC parliament and all BBC regions and nations and radio stations on UK epg (possible on ROI sky box easily) or via other "channels" on ROI card why would you want to pay for BBC Prime?

13E is worth getting, A FTA system costing 150 Euro to 200 Euro (or add 100 Euro for motor to get about 20 satellites) with an 80cm dish, will give many excellent free channels not on Sky.

Antenna

Speaking of RTE DTT trials, I remember being told, a good few years ago at this stage, that RTE transmitted some DTT tests from Mullaghanish. I don't know what UHF channels they used, I suspect they may have used the TnaG/TG4 UHF Channel 31 overnight after TnaG programmes finished.
I think this was around the time of the initial DTT testing in the Dublin area.

L1011

Mullangish is allocated channels 22, 25, 28, 32, 30 and 34, horizontally polarised for digital. I would assume they used one of these, as the Three Rock enternally on-and-off tests used the channel allocated for Mux 6 - 34 in Mullaganish's case.